Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Don't Drink And Rape

That's a clickbait headline if there ever was one. I'm trying to learn this game, my dear readers, because it IS the game when talk turns to the so-called "wimminz' issues."

Such as the women's astonishing ability to get raped. Emily Yoffe at Slate has written an article on that, and many responses to her omit the link to reduce its clickbaitiness. I don't think I can omit the link because I want to look at some direct quotes from the piece. This makes me sad, as I'm contributing to the game.

At the same time, Yoffe's piece has a few pearls in it, scattered among the pig dung, and I want to spend some time separating the two, if I can.

Let's see what the pearls might be in Yoffe's piece:

She points out that binge drinking is not good for you. It's not good for your health and it's not good for your safety. Bad things can "happen" to you if you are too inebriated to take care of yourself, and bad things can "happen" to other people if, say, you decide to get behind the wheel of a car while drunk out of your mind. Yoffe also suggests that binge drinking can turn you into a rapist, and she certainly states that binge drinking can make you a victim of a rape. Or perhaps a mugging? Or a beating? A theft?

In one awful high-profile case after another—the U.S. Naval Academy; Steubenville, Ohio; now the allegations in Maryville, Mo.—we read about a young woman, sometimes only a girl, who goes to a party and ends up being raped. As soon as the school year begins, so do reports of female students sexually assaulted by their male classmates. A common denominator in these cases is alcohol, often copious amounts, enough to render the young woman incapacitated. But a misplaced fear of blaming the victim has made it somehow unacceptable to warn inexperienced young women that when they get wasted, they are putting themselves in potential peril.

Bolds are mine. I use them to point out how Yoffe's foggy writing hides the pearls and covers them up with the pig dung. We begin with "awful" high-profile cases where a young girl "ends up" being raped. Note that the active voice is about a girl going to a party. Then the passive voice takes over and she "ends up" getting raped. Bad things "happened" to her, because she was drunk and went to a party.

The pearl in her story: That we should all take care of ourselves and make sure that we are not the slowest zebra in the herd running away from the hungry lions. The pig dung in the story: The lions* will still chase the zebras and the slowest one gets eaten. Yoffe pays little attention to that aspect of the story.

In one awful high-profile case after another—the U.S. Naval Academy;
Steubenville, Ohio; now the allegations in Maryville, Mo.—we read about a
young woman, sometimes only a girl, who goes to a party and ends up being raped.
As soon as the school year begins, so do reports of female students
sexually assaulted by their male classmates. A common denominator in
these cases is alcohol, often copious amounts, enough to render the
young woman incapacitated. But a misplaced fear of blaming the victim
has made it somehow unacceptable to warn inexperienced young women that
when they get wasted, they are putting themselves in potential peril.

Is this truly the case? That young people are not taught about the dangers of being too drunk to take care of themselves because it would come across as victim blaming? Or is Yoffe arguing that young men are warned about the dangers but not young women? Or is this all about the presumed behavior that will trigger a rape event and get a woman (or a man) raped, using the passive voice Yoffe did herself earlier in the quote?

The borderline between "rape prevention" of the kind Yoffe advocates (don't be the slowest zebra) and victim blaming (why did the zebras graze so close to the lions?) is a fuzzy one.

Think of other examples from different types of crimes: Should someone parking an expensive car in a poor neighbor be told that doing so was just inviting car theft? What about a man or a woman wearing large diamond rings and fat gold chains in the subway late at night? Yet avoiding those forms of behavior probably does reduce a person's chances of getting eaten by the human equivalent of lions. But we tend not to blame the victims for their "bad choices" after a crime has taken place. There's something different about rape as a crime, almost a whiff of it being "natural."

I quite like the lions-and-zebras parable (initially suggested by Yoffe herself, in " Sometimes the woman is the only one drunk and runs into a particular
type of shrewd—and sober—sexual predator who lurks where women drink
like a lion at a watering hole"), because it also serves to show that Yoffe seems to think that rape is either committed by alcohol or that the small percentage of hard-core rapists out there will always be on the lookout for the slow zebras. In either case the onus is on the victims to protect themselves by not drinking too much. By running faster, really.

So the pearl in the story is that taking care of oneself is an important skill and women and men should both be encouraged to practice that self-love.

I didn't find a pearl about how we should teach our children to take care of others, too, to not let a friend get raped or get behind the wheel drunk and so on, and I didn't find a pearl about teaching young people that when an "inexperienced young person is wasted" perhaps we shouldn't see whether that person gets exploited or "ends up" exploiting someone else but instead make sure that they get safely home.

And I didn't find the pearl about the reason why victim blaming matters. Nothing about the long history of rape victims being blamed for the crime, because of the time of the day they were out, because of the part of the town they were found in, because of the length of their skirts or the visibility of their arms or because they smiled at a stranger or didn't smile at a stranger and so on and so on. This is not just history, either, but a current undertow in the stream of public debates about sexual violence both in the US and abroad. If you read enough comment threads on events such as the recent gang rapes in India, you will find opinions which suggest that women, by their very existence anywhere outside their locked homes, are the real cause of rape.

That's what is tricky about Yoffe's arguments. There will always be the slowest zebra, and teaching zebras how to run faster will not change that.

Which does NOT mean that I advocate getting drunk out of your mind for anyone or that it would be a good way to stay safe.

Finally, to the part of Yoffe's article which is both untrue and pure clickbaiting: Female binge drinking is the fault of feminism!

The text under the attached photograph says:

Young women are getting a distorted message that their right to match men drink for drink is a feminist issue.

Funny, that. I've never read a single feminist book which would have advocated binge drinking or matching men drink for drink. Now who is it that has distorted the feminist message?

I’ve told my daughter that it’s her responsibility to take steps to protect herself. (“I hear you! Stop!”) The biological reality
is that women do not metabolize alcohol the same way as men, and that
means drink for drink women will get drunker faster. I tell her I know
alcohol will be widely available (even though it’s illegal for most
college students) but that she’ll have a good chance of knowing what’s
going on around her if she limits herself to no more than two drinks,
sipped slowly—no shots!—and stays away from notorious punch bowls. If
female college students start moderating their drinking as a way of
looking out for their own self-interest—and looking out for your own
self-interest should be a primary feminist principle—I hope their
restraint trickles down to the men.

Knowing your own limits is good advice. Suggesting that this restraint trickles down to the men is rubbish, because the lure of drinking a lot in college has its roots in very different and more masculine places than whatever the chicks might do.

To summarize, feminism shouldn't be just about how not to be slowest zebra in the herd running away from the lions, and neither should the concept of rape prevention be about that, even though Slate advertises this article by "The Best Rape Prevention: Tell College Women to Stop Getting So Wasted".

And there's a very real need for us all to teach our children not just how to take care of themselves but also how to take care of others. At the minimum, we should teach that "don't drink and rape" slogan to the general society.
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*The term "lions" does not refer to all men here. I use it in Yoffe's sense as some proportion of the male population who she thinks will always predate on vulnerable people. The term "zebras" should be interpreted as applying to all women and men who are viewed as prey by the "lions."

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